A Dialogue on Causality, Relations
 and Other Things

Edwina Taborsky and Ron Cottam

The following is the extended text of an online dialogue between Ron Cottam and Edwina Taborsky. The discussion addresses the grounding of the themes of the papers by Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson and Roger Vounckx, which appear in this issue, and the paper by Edwina Taborsky, which appeared in SEED, Vol.2/2.  

Edwina has suggested that, after the Big Bang, the resultant loss of symmetry required other methods to establish a new type of symmetry. This new type of symmetry enforcement can be understood as ‘interpretive’; that is, it operates as a network of codification by measurement, a measuring process that interprets relations, treading a fine line between the asymmetry of discrete differentiated matter and the symmetry-inducing forces of evolving group habits. Ron also agrees with this symmetry-breaking concept, and introduces the notion of ‘struccess’, closely related to consciousness, which is rather similar to Edwina’s notion of the mediating process of the sign.

Edwina’s paper ‘The Six Semiosic Predicates’ outlines a thought-experiment of an original Unity of energy that broke apart with the Big Bang, which introduced gradient differentiations of energy. To prevent ultimate dissipation of energy into randomness, the universe developed a symmetry-inducing process of a network of relations, which synthesizes and develops common codes of reality within which instantiations of those common codes can develop. The whole process – the common code, the instantiation and the interactions – is called a Sign, understood as a dynamic triadic action of relating three 'nodes' with three relations.

One of Ron’s papers concentrates on structure, the other on dynamics. In the first paper he introduces the notion of scalar levels or multi-level hierarchies of reality. He too uses the concept of a system as operating within or being a network, described using the representational device of ‘balls and sticks’ or, in my terminology, instances and relations. But, we very rapidly moved into disputed issues.

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